The 2016 melting season

[Rob Dekker]

Dr. Slater projects 7.25 M km^2 by 7/17.
Still some 500 k km^2 less (7.7) than 2012 at that date.

[oren]

A-Team... I wouldn't be surprised to see the floe you posted on this morning break into 3 of 4 pieces pretty soon. It has two big cracks across the middle that were actually open water at ~73N when the sun came up way back on 28 Feb...

In the attached gif I've tried to keep them centered the whole way through so as to make it easier to follow....

Was this supposed to animate? It doesn't, at least for me.

[DavidR]

Dr. Slater projects 7.25 M km^2 by 7/17.
Still some 500 k km^2 less (7.7) than 2012 at that date.

It  will  be interesting to see if his projections stay 500 K km^2 above the observations as they  have for the past  month.

[Frivolousz21]

Yeah the euro goes nuts again

[Neven]

Any day now:

[Gray-Wolf]

Am I seeing the extent of gyre rotation marked out in low ice from Russia through to the Canadian Archipelago?

It's as if the ice had been mechanically eroded and then infilled with late formed ice which is now failing?

Or is it the loss of infill ice left by the Fram losses from mid December onward?

What would occur if we found a strong forcing toward Fram with this weakness in place? Could we see an open water pole due to ice migrating away from the central region?

[seaicesailor]

Any day now:

Given the drifts predicted for today and tomorrow, it should might be open by June 1. (edit, had checked the wrong dates)

[JayW]

To piggyback on Gray-Wolf's post.  Looking at the CAB extent prepared by Wipneus (attached), I wonder as to what's going on. i.e. Is it rain?, polynas? Melt ponds? Artifact?  As it appears the "June cliff" is largely driven by losses in the Hudson, Kara, and Baffin regions, places that will melt out anyway, I think what happens in the other areas this June will tell the story.

https://sites.google.com/site/arcticseaicegraphs/regional

[Neven]

To piggyback on Gray-Wolf's post.  Looking at the CAB extent prepared by Wipneus (attached), I wonder as to what's going on. i.e. Is it rain?, polynas? Melt ponds? Artifact?

I think it's the Atlantic intruding.

[Wipneus]

See attched 10-day delta map.

It is mostly the open water north of Svalbard, and a little bit north of the CAA.

[F.Tnioli]

Any day now:

Well, seems that mine "give it couple more days" response to your "can it possibly happen before the month ends" will be spot-on, eh. Yep, any day now indeed.

[iceman]

Any day now:

Given the drifts predicted for today and tomorrow, it should might be open by June 1. (edit, had checked the wrong dates)

All eyes on the Isthmus of Neven for the next few days.  Winds will turn more favorable for the ice, but edge melt from the Beaufort polynya likely to continue.

[F.Tnioli]

To piggyback on Gray-Wolf's post.  Looking at the CAB extent prepared by Wipneus (attached), I wonder as to what's going on. i.e. Is it rain?, polynas? Melt ponds? Artifact?

I think it's the Atlantic intruding.

It sure looks so, but i think it's not the only thing "responsible".

Also warm winter. Also El-Nino energy subtly cripping up into Arctic from all directions in the form of slightly higher (than otherwise would be) averages, and when integrated over whole Arctic it gets massive and surely affects the CAB. And also probably additional soot (in compare to average amount reaching CAB in May of any given (recent) year), too.

P.S. Stanford's Mark Jacobson demonstrated, ~6 years ago, that soot was much more powerful factor than usually suggested, and i have a lurking feeling that since then soot is still much underestimated as a melt factor by many.

[Buddy]

As it appears the "June cliff" is largely driven by losses in the Hudson, Kara, and Baffin regions, places that will melt out anyway, I think what happens in the other areas this June will tell the story.

I agree.  We now have a 3 pronged "attack" on the ice:  (1)  Inside Svalbard (2) southern Beaufort Sea north of Alaska/western Canada, and (3) north of the Bering Strait now clearing out.  All that is "needed" is a front on the Russian side of Arctic.

A big "fat tail" of ice that survived the 2012 melt in the northern Beaufort Sea will be lost this year.....as will ice on the "pole side" of the main flow.

And now with hurricane season in the on deck circle....the possibility of more warm water being persuaded further north towards Svalbard is not going to help.

Not a good scenario....

[Gray-Wolf]

I think it's the Atlantic intruding.

i'm not quite clear on what you mean by this Neven?

 Is the swathe of ice cover ,before the disruption, underlain by warm Atlantic waters but protected by its halocline but then something is forcing that water through the halocline to the surface leading to the low concentration/weakness?

[magnamentis]

I for one shall very much miss the Beaufort Gyre and the rest. Beaufort, Nares Strait and Jakobshavn were endlessly fascinating natural features.

BIG smile, a good one :good:

[Neven]

i'm not quite clear on what you mean by this Neven?

Sorry, should have been clearer. The question was: whence the CAB decline (see graph posted by JayW)?

I suggested the ice edge on the Atlantic side of the Arctic has retreated so far North that it has entered the CAB region (as corroborated by Wipneus delta map).

[Jim Hunt]

Meanwhile, over at Idiot Central, Steven Goddard is genuinely claiming that there is more ice this year than last

Whilst “Jousting with Malice in Blunderland” I couldn't help but notice these holes in the "oldest, thickest sea ice" in the Arctic. In 2016, not 2015!

[meddoc]

Whoaaa, Jim Hunt, that's an awful lot of open water for the CAB...

I guess from now on, absoultely, every single one of You should be coupling
-geopolitical,
-social,
-economical (energy) developments with state of the Arctic Sea Ice.

It's like You're sitting downtown in a traffic jam confused, not knowing where to turn Your head...

[NeilT]

I created a new politics subject and took this discussion there.

[Lord M Vader]

Jim Hunt: I saw those small holes but thought they might just be "crap".. Apparently not!! And how bad is the ice if holes are forming in what is supposed to be the Arctic "safe heaven"?

[AmbiValent]

Last year the thick ice north of the CAA drifted northward for a while instead of pushing into the CAA as it usually does. So it's possible that new ice formed there, which is of course much thinner than the multi year ice around there. In the moment I think the old MYI there is safe - but the young ice in Kara, Beaufort and Chukchi looks bad.

[magnamentis]

Arctic. In 2016, not 2015!

interesting observation that makes me express a thought that i'm pondering over for quite some time.
IMO and i think commonly agreed upon there is a huge amount of extra heat in the system as a whole
and starting about 2 years ago i got the impression that while the surface part of it is subject to
seasonal ups and downs, that the ocean waters are storing the vast majority of that extra heat.

as we probably agree, surface temps do currently not make up for huge melting of that kind in that spot,
hence what remains is melting from below due to currents that find (or have) their ways and are popping
up in places. this is not the only such spot, there are other well knows.

long story short, i more and more believe the year that will catch us "cold" (by surprise) will be driven from
ocean heat and not by surface climate or a combination of both.

[A-Team]

Below is another WorldView layer experiment, this time with 'sea ice concentration'. The palette can be very squeezed since there is very little in the scenes which is lower than 90% concentration. It is lightened up in the final version

The black is 0% by AMSR2 reckoning -- the optical layer would show through but was turned off to allow pixel counting and area percentage to be determined (not shown). Pixels are fairly large at 12 km.

To keep the file size down and skip days with sensor glitches, the animation only shows even dates (with a couple exceptions) during April and May. Once again about midway in May, we see the anomaly sweeping in from the Bering Strait to the upper Beaufort Gyre. The consistent low concentration there has an underwhelming optical counterpart.

[Lord M Vader]

NEVEN: Have you used these pages to get SSTA for the Arctic? Polar NCEP NOAA:

http://polar.ncep.noaa.gov/sst/ophi/

Clicking at for ex. Svalbard and you get: http://polar.ncep.noaa.gov/sst/ophi/color_newdisp_anomaly_north_pole_stereo_ophi0.png

And at Climate4you there is tons of info: http://www.climate4you.com/SeaTemperatures.htm

In addition, see this article with SSTAs in Kara, Chukchi and E. Baffin Bay from early 1980's. http://www.arctic.noaa.gov/reportcard/sea_surface_temperature.html

Hope that any of the first three links are valuable for your bi-weekly updates!



Best, LMV

[Jim Hunt]

Whoaaa, Jim Hunt, that's an awful lot of open water for the CAB...

You may wish to check out 2014 before coming to any definite conclusions?

http://go.nasa.gov/1Z8ECWd

[JayW]

Any day now:

I think you could get s a small boat through there. 

http://rammb.cira.colostate.edu/ramsdis/online/npp_viirs_arctic.asp

Watching some of the two day loops, one can really see the southerly flow over the Bering.

Edit: also, a large piece of landfast ice looks like it just sheared off near the "impact zone"

[jdallen]

Any day now:

I think you could get s a small boat through there. 

http://rammb.cira.colostate.edu/ramsdis/online/npp_viirs_arctic.asp

Watching some of the two day loops, one can really see the southerly flow over the Bering.

Close.  Very close.

[jdallen]

Arctic temperature assembly.

Using Land mask, All four Brightness temperature (Band-31), night, day, Terra and Aqua modis bands, Red 2 pallet.  Low end temperature set to 271K, Corrected reflectance (Bands M11-12-I1) Suomi NPP/VIIRS, all except land mask at 50% opacity.

This gives a pretty good sense of where temps currently are at the freezing point of sea water and above.  The corrected reflectance band I included because it shows cloud cover, which because of the nature of the Brightness temperature bands may obscure warmer temperatures beneath them.

Walking it back and forth through the dates you can very easily follow the movement of large warm air masses the shift around.

Besides the obvious ominous heat over the Chukchi and ESS, note the heat along the west shore of Greenland, and steady drum-beat of heat getting transferred into the Barents from further south.

Download from the 29th captured and displayed.

https://worldview.earthdata.nasa.gov/?p=arctic&l=VIIRS_SNPP_CorrectedReflectance_BandsM11-I2-I1(opacity=0.58),VIIRS_SNPP_CorrectedReflectance_TrueColor(hidden),Land_Mask,MODIS_Terra_Brightness_Temp_Band31_Night(opacity=0.5,palette=red_1,min=271.1,squash),MODIS_Terra_Brightness_Temp_Band31_Day(opacity=0.5,palette=red_1,min=271.1,squash),MODIS_Aqua_Brightness_Temp_Band31_Night(opacity=0.5,palette=red_1,min=273.6,squash),MODIS_Aqua_Brightness_Temp_Band31_Day(opacity=0.51,palette=red_1,min=271.1,squash),Reference_Labels(hidden),Reference_Features(hidden),Coastlines(hidden)&t=2016-05-29&v=-5857942.430243883,-2185779.1903288793,3997033.569756117,2082252.8096711207

[Nick_Naylor]

What little is left of the Beaufort-Alaska ice bridge (contrast enhanced):

[werther]

On my CAD, there's only 48 km left. And yes, along the fast ice its opening up. Beaufort and Chukchi re-united in open water.

No IJIS yet, but MODIS shows big losses in the Labrador Sea (Hudson Strait almost accessible), around the Northern Waters polynia and in the Kara Sea.

For 5 June, there's a dipole visible on ECMWF and a relative heat wave around Wrangel and the ESS coast.

[Lord M Vader]

OP ECMWF 12z run has a nice GAC in about a week. Probably just bogus but interesting anyway

[JayW]

The "bridge" is taking some once landfast ice with it. 
 
http://rammb.cira.colostate.edu/ramsdis/online/npp_viirs_arctic.asp

[Neven]

Oh, wow, cool image. Good find, JayW. Is that the VIIRS thingy on the Suomi thingy I read about recently?

[JayW]

Oh, wow, cool image. Good find, JayW. Is that the VIIRS thingy on the Suomi thingy I read about recently?

I found the images at a Colorado State website.  The imagery is updated rather quickly as new images are added every hour I'd say.  The loops are great. 

And yes, it's from the VIIRS SUOMI satellite/sensor thingy.

http://rammb.cira.colostate.edu/ramsdis/online/npp_viirs_arctic.asp

Edit: I forgot about the GINA website.  It has even higher resolution images .  Sorry for all the pictures taking up space.  Latest image.

http://feeder.gina.alaska.edu/

[Nick_Naylor]

Yes, the loops are quite cool - definitely need to bookmark some of these
http://rammb.cira.colostate.edu/ramsdis/online/loop.asp?data_folder=npp_viirs/viirs_ncc_remapped_alaska&width=899&height=800

Edit: The most recent frame at the time of posting this shows the detachment is 99% complete.

[Watching_from_Canberra]

Temperature at O-Buoy #14 is up around 0degC ATM:
http://obuoy.datatransport.org/monitor#buoy14/weather

[A-Team]

New asset for us, JayW. Good spotting.

I dunno, kayak maybe if one waiting for an opening and paddled hard. Land fast is now in 3-4 pieces.

[JayW]

New asset for us, JayW. Good spotting.

I dunno, kayak maybe if one waiting for an opening and paddled hard. Land fast is now in 3-4 pieces.

I edited my post with this link, but the GINA puffin feeder site has higher resolution.

http://feeder.gina.alaska.edu/

[Neven]

Hope that any of the first three links are valuable for your bi-weekly updates!

Thanks, LMV, that's really nice of you, but unfortunately none of these maps are as visually appealing and informative as the DMI SST anomaly maps. Besides, I have saved quite a few of the DMI maps over the years (for the ASI updates), which enables me to compare.

[TerryM]

Herschel Island off the coast of the Yukon in the Beaufort Sea was between +1 & +10  dC today. I believe it was 2012 when researchers were swimming off the island and sea temperatures were actually higher than the Mediterranean for a number of weeks.
An area I've watched ever since.
Terry

[magnamentis]

just to be sure, you know that the med has 20-30C in summer and i assume we're talking summer LOL

so what you're saying is that water temps up there were above that, sorry but that is hard to believe, perhaps you could elaborate a bit (provide some background and/or evidence)

[Gray-Wolf]

I recall seeing , and discussing, it too! I cannot recall what SST anom map it was ( was it Neven's blessed DMI???) but the anom put the water temp at med. figures!

[A-Team]

JayW writes the GINA puffin feeder site has higher resolution. http://feeder.gina.alaska.edu/

Very nice indeed. I opened one of the 'original' resolution links which is 1.1 GB in an unusual tif format that can however be opened as 3 grayscale channels in ImageJ freeware using 'Bioformat' import and reassembled as color 24000 x 16000 pixels. A few scenes from there are cropped out below.

[marcel_g]

de-lurking to ask a quick question:

I'm looking at Climate Reanalyzer forecast ( http://cci-reanalyzer.org/Forecasts/#NH-SAT ) and it looks like the ESS mainly and Chukchi are going to get above freezing temps with mostly high pressure and clear skies. Am I reading that correctly?

If so how much damage is that weather going to do to that ice? Or is it too short of a time scale to have a significant effect? I would guess that at the least it'll set up that area of thick ice for some more dramatic melting later on.

Thanks,
back to lurker mode.

[Neven]

And now we wait for UB SIC maps to show that the way is clear (not just the block, but also further west towards the Bering Sea):

[Neven]

de-lurking to ask a quick question:

I'm looking at Climate Reanalyzer forecast ( http://cci-reanalyzer.org/Forecasts/#NH-SAT ) and it looks like the ESS mainly and Chukchi are going to get above freezing temps with mostly high pressure and clear skies. Am I reading that correctly?

If so how much damage is that weather going to do to that ice? Or is it too short of a time scale to have a significant effect? I would guess that at the least it'll set up that area of thick ice for some more dramatic melting later on.

Hi, Marcel. You guessed right.  I don't know about direct effects, but expect the ice there to turn blue on the LANCE-MODIS satellite images, which means melt ponds.

[Lord M Vader]

According to Jonathan Erdmans retweet, Barrow hit a record high of 44F yesterday. I suppose this is just a daily record high. https://twitter.com/wxjerdman/status/737629665490149380

[TerryM]

Sorry - way OT
Terry

[werther]

According to NCEP/NCAR, temps in the S Chukchi Sea have been very warm lately. Also compared to '12. OTOH, next week saw wide spread warming over all the Arctic in '12.
This year may not be far behind, with warmth now spreading over the ESS. Snow cover is finished, temps around 25dC some 100 kim from the Arctic shores.
Temps over the fast ice are still low, about 2-3dC. But that was enough to produce that eerie blue hue today on MODIS.
Wide spread melt ponding near Wrangel Island and in front of the Kolyma Delta. Pevek Bay is water covered ice.
It will get worse, up to +10dC over the fast ice for about a week. Climate Reanalyzer forecasts above freezing basin-wide by the 7th of June...